Results 1–20 of 1000 for (in the 'Commons debates' OR in the 'Westminster Hall debates' OR in the 'Lords debates' OR in the 'Northern Ireland Assembly debates') speaker:John Barrett

John Barrett: Thank you, Mr. Hancock, and I will do my best to be very brief. Support for small businesses is absolutely vital, as everyone here today has said. Before I came into Parliament, I ran two separate small businesses, but I cannot believe that there is one Member in any party in the House who has not been contacted by a business that needs some help at this time. Recent events should have...

John Barrett: I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. He may wish to follow President Obama and "roll back the spectre of a warming planet". As such, will he ensure that the climate conference in December is not derailed by discussions over what developing countries must do and that it accepts that those who produced the most CO2 over the past century must take most of the responsibility for...

John Barrett: It was said that hon. Members would have a month to go through 1.2 million receipts. Will the Leader of the House assure us that when Members' feedback has gone back into the system, they will have an opportunity to check that the corrections have been made before the receipts go into the public domain? If a mistake is made the first time round, hon. Members should have the opportunity to...

John Barrett: Does the hon. Lady accept that the Government's own target was to reduce the numbers by 1 million, but in an answer to a parliamentary question they said that they expect to miss that target by 700,000?

John Barrett: I am following what the hon. Gentleman is saying with interest and I think that he has hit on a very important point. Does he accept that although the unemployment rate among the disabled is roughly double that among able-bodied people, those who are out of work and disabled are more than twice as likely to want to work than the able-bodied? There is a real pool of potential among the...

John Barrett: Many people have been shocked at the images shown on television of what has recently been unfolding in Gaza. The true horrors of war, some might think, yet that is not so—what we see on TV is an extremely sanitised version of what is happening on the ground. Watching TV in other European countries or on the internet gives a far more graphic picture of the reality—of the suffering that the...

John Barrett: One way to stimulate the economy in the north and south, tackle pollution and reduce the demand for increased airport capacity would be to invest in a national high-speed rail link. Why, after 12 years of this Labour Government, are we still waiting?

John Barrett: Does my hon. Friend agree that if there is any question about airspace capacity safety, the issue could be dealt with by the introduction of a high-speed rail link? About 50 per cent. of all flights that leave Edinburgh go to other UK cities that people could easily access by alternative means.

John Barrett: The Minister mentioned that a lot of pensioners are able to access information about benefits by telephone. One of the issues raised in the equivalent debate last year was the poor quality of service given by a number of call centres. Is she convinced that things have moved on and that when people phone up for help they get the support and advice they need?

John Barrett: I wish to put on record the fact that I appreciated having early sight of the Minister's statement and that the Liberal Democrats welcome her decision not to reclaim these amounts, even where the sums are relatively small. We appreciate that, and we know that many constituents up and down the country will too.

John Barrett: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we are entering a unique situation in the year ahead? It is possible that we will have negative inflation during this recession, so pensioners' inflation might rise at the same time as the indices used to calculate the uprating of benefits actually fall.

John Barrett: It is interesting that in a week when much of the news has been about people at the other end of the pay scale—those earning large sums of money—we are considering people who are surviving on benefits, and who are very much at the opposite end of the scale. Sadly, important though the measures before us are, they will not get the same news coverage as people who have been getting large...

John Barrett: The Foreign Secretary may have seen the recent report from Amnesty International that details the use of white phosphorous artillery shells by the Israeli army against civilians in the recent offensive in Gaza. What action will he and the Government take as a result of those actions?

John Barrett: Today's debate not only is on an important subject that requires parliamentary time, but is at the heart of what we in the House should constantly be pushing up the agenda. At a time when the economic downturn dominates the news and when tens of billions of pounds are being injected into a banking sector in which salaries and bonuses are paid in millions of pounds to some and six-figure...

John Barrett: That is a key factor in the entire costing of the massive costs that are involved in care. Whatever it costs to care—through trained nurses, support staff or whatever—a massive burden of care is currently taken on by families. Whether younger people are looking after elderly people or parents are looking after their children, the big worry is what will happen when they have gone. In many...

John Barrett: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the worst is yet to come? The Royal Bank of Scotland's headquarters are in my constituency. The bank has announced 2,300 job losses, but the new chief executive who has taken over from Sir Fred Goodwin has said that the full number will be around 20,000. There are more job losses to come in that sector.

John Barrett: "In the cinema, you dream with your eyes open." Those words were spoken by Bernardo Bertolucci at the Edinburgh international film festival some years ago, and for me they sum up why we are having this debate. The film industry in the UK is important for a wide variety of reasons. It is important culturally, creatively, economically, technically and for many other reasons. At one end of the...

John Barrett: Does the Minister accept that a problem in using section 6 is that the Act is relatively recent and has not been shown to be effective? Something much simpler is needed so that more effective prosecutions can be brought, because until that happens there will be no deterrent and the business will carry on.

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